Monday, October 21, 2013

What the Delia, Ephron?

Can you imagine if you were able to pick a subject you knew absolutely nothing about, write a batshit crazy opinion piece on it, and get it published in The New York Times as easily as a stoned college student calls in for a bucket of chicken wings?

What is Hell? Jean-Paul Sartre said it's "other people." Well, I say it's being in a classroom and always knowing the correct answer, but instead the teacher keeps calling on little Delia because what he really wants in life is to be a screenwriter and he wants to get in with her family. That's what it feels like when you open what is ostensibly an intelligent newspaper and read something like this about a subject that's important to you:

It’s this bike program. The other day I stepped off a curb and a bike coming the wrong way down a one-way street passed so close I could feel its breeze on my back. It seems as though, every day, I’m almost hit by a bike.

You're probably thinking to yourself, "If you're almost getting hit by a bike every single day you must be doing something wrong." As it turns out, she is, and it won't surprise any cyclist to learn that what she's doing wrong is walking around with her head completely up her ass:

As it happens, the bike was going the wrong way and I was crossing against the light.

Okay. So she stepped into the street when she shouldn't have, a bike went near her, and nothing bad happened. What's the problem? Well, apparently bike share is undermining what it means to be a New Yorker:

That’s what New Yorkers do. When we walk, we don’t pay attention to lights. That is practically the definition of a New Yorker: when walking, ignores lights. These bicycles have made walking around the city much scarier. Helmets are recommended gear for bikers. These days pedestrians should be wearing helmets.

No, the definition of a New Yorker is not "when walking, ignores lights." It's "when walking, knows what's up." It's not ignoring the lights, it's knowing that you know better than the lights. There's a difference.

Delia Ephron clearly does not know better than the lights. Perhaps she did at one time, but it's obvious she has not kept pace with this dynamic urban environment, so what she should probably do is spend some time engaging in "remedial walking"--you know, strictly adhering to lights and traffic signals until she's gotten her bearings again.

It can't be 1986 forever.

But this isn't Delia Ephron's real problem. It's not just the Citi Bikes, it's that they're blue:

That should be the reason I picked hate, but it isn’t.

He’s turned our city blue.For $41 million — what Citibank paid to sponsor the program for five years — our city bikes became Citi Bikes. To make certain you don’t forget this fact, a Citi Bike sign hangs in front of the handlebars, Citi Bike is printed twice on the frame, and a Citi Bike billboard drapes the rear wheel on both sides. The font is the familiar Citibank font and the Citibank signature decoration floats over the “t.” There is no way to see a Citi Bike without thinking Citibank. The 6,000 bikes so far rolled out, of a possible 10,000, and their signs are a Day-Glo cobalt blue that you see on banks. Nobody wears this color. Nobody paints his or her apartment this color. This blue is bank blue.
Yeah, nobody in New York wears blue.

("What's the deal with saying nobody wears blue?"--Jerry Seinfeld)

Anyway, let's look at a Zipcar:

To make certain I don't forget I'm "sharing" my city with a Zipcar, they put their ugly green logo on both doors, and their stupid "Wheels when you want them tagline" on the trunk. On top of that, I have to look at the branding of the motor vehicle itself: the make and model of car on the trunk, the corporate logo on the front grille and on all four wheels. Then they need a place to store all those cars, and a Citi Bike station with its dozens of bikes is about the size of two (2) Zipcars, which means when a Zipcar driver pulls over in front of Starbucks to run in for a pupkin doucheaccino he's already taking up as much public space as like half an entire Citi Bike rack. And yes, there may be no way to see a Citi Bike without thinking Citibank, but there's also no way to see a fucking Citibank without thinking Citibank, and the city is full of them. There's also no way to see a Zipcar without thinking Zipcar, and Mini Cooper or Madza or whatever kind of car it is, and "yuppies heading to Fairway."

Evidently Delia Ephron would prefer to be almost hit by one of these, since it's more "authentically New York" or something.

I mean, I don't have any love for Citibank, but there aren't very many artisanal Brooklyn businesses with earthtone logos queueing up to sponsor giant initiatives that enhance our public transportation network, so it is what it is. The divisions that now comprise the New York City subway system were also private enterprises in the beginning, and I think that turned out pretty well for all of us, though I'm sure if they were only introducing the whole subway concept today Delia Ephron would hate them. "These trains. They're underground, they're noisy, they're full of ads, the stations are ugly, and you have to have these grates in the sidewalk and I can't walk on them in heels!"

By the way, there's tremendous irony in the fact that a woman who hates corporate branding co-wrote one of the biggest Hollywood corporate branding exercises of the 1990s:

And yes, while ostensibly a New Yorker (by virtue of the fact she ignores lights), Delia Ephron doesn't want you to forget she's all about Hollywood:

Almost all directors and cinematographers know that, in a movie, the color blue pulls focus. If you place a love scene in front of, say, a blue bench, the audience will look at the bench and not the actors. Our city, if you look around, isn’t a blue city, or wasn’t until the bikes arrived. With the exception of Times Square, where loud clashing colors are the point, our city is browns, grays, greens and brick red.

I really hope the next mayor appoints Delia Ephron to be head of the Department of Transportation, because we should really base our infrastructure on which colors look best in romantic comedies. By the way, Delia Ephron finds bikes annoying, but what I find annoying is when a whole city block gets shut down so they can film some stupid romantic comedy. But sure, by all means, let's treat the city like a giant soundstage and avoid anything that "pulls focus."

Yes, the color blue has no place in this town, and with Delia Ephron as DOT Commish we'll rid the city of the Scourge of Blue once and for all. Just imagine, no more buses:

No more law enforcement:

No more Manhattan Bridge:

No New York Knicks:

No New York Mets (obviously):

Actually, especially no Mets because of Citibank:

(I think Ephron just plotzed.)

And, most importantly, let's nuke the clear azure sky because those beautiful days are pulling focus like a motherfucker:

Then the piece just starts getting offensive:

Where there used to be four lanes for cars traveling down Ninth, there are now two. A long triangular concrete island has been installed to guide drivers making left turns even though drivers have been making left turns since they got licenses.

Yeah, they're trying to keep Ninth Avenue from being an expressway so people don't keep dying. And sure, people have been making left turns since they got licenses, and they've also been killing people in the process.

And here's her prediction for the spring:

Then the snow will melt and freeze, and someone on a blue bike will skid right into you. Finally spring. Your broken leg is almost healed. The surgery to insert pins went well. You have completed four weeks of physical therapy, and at last can limp around outside without crutches. As you spy a cherry tree lush with blossoms, a you-know-what will zip by. Suddenly that beautiful day will get so much uglier.

Or maybe your leg broke because you tried to walk over an icy subway grate in heels. Anyway, here are some stats, Ephron:

People are dying. A lot of them. Three young kids were run down the week before you wrote this. But yeah, keep making shit up because you don't like blue.

Actually, I don't think this has anything to do with hating bikes or the color blue. I think what's really going on here is that she's in love with this guy:

("Watchoo talkin' bout, Wildcat?")

Look at it this way. Suppose some yenta like Delia Ephron goes to see an apartment that's for sale. She loves it. It's to die for! But she can't afford it.

Now let's say that this hugely successful guy with a ton of money comes along and buys the place for himself and his wife or his parter or whatever. And let's say they renovate it and decorate it to their tastes. And then let's say the apartment gets a whole spread in "Vanity Fair" or something.

Do you think Delia Ephron's going to look at the pictures and say, "What a beautiful apartment! I'm so happy for them!"? Of course not. She's going to say, "I can't believe they did the walls in that color!" No matter what they do she's going to hate it, because she's jealous.

And that's what's happening here. Regardless of what you think of Michael Bloomberg, he's the ultimate catch for any yenta. Not only is he like the richest Jewish guy in America or something, but he's in charge of New York City. Forget having a nice apartment--he runs all the apartments! The guy gentrifies half a borough with a single zoning change. So don't think for a second that if Delia Ephron was schtupping Bloomie she wouldn't be traipsing all over town, throwing parties and bragging to her friends about the pretty blue bikes they scattered all over the place. And you can be sure her next project would be a romantic comedy called "Dockblocked," in which some hateful yuppie couple in Brooklyn fall in love at a Citi Bike station.

Instead, we have to settle for this--though now that I think about it we're probably getting the better end of the deal.

This morning a car turned right on red on in Crescent Ave. in L.I.C., sped past me, braked checked me, then turned right into gas station driveway, eventually rubbing up next to me as I stopped my bike.

The woman behind the wheel began screaming like she was scared that she hit me.

Unfortunately, she was screaming in anger, and informed me that I was in big trouble.

I said:

'I am OK, please watch out and use your turn signal next time.'

She begins to yell(for context, she is extremely overweight, in a Honda CRV, and has a handicap parking permit hanging from her mirror).

'I do NOT have to use a turn signal!!! You are wrong!! Get away from me!! Get away!!! Help!!!'

I am straddling my bike, in khakis, a button down shirt, fred-style race helmet, with work shoes and my lunch in my pannier.

'Listen lady, I am just trying to get to work. Have a great day.'

I start to ride away, and she screams

'You are in big trouble, stop him, you are going to hurt someone!'

At this point I lose my temper and call her a 'crazy ass bitch'. She flips out and hops out of her car, and comes towards me yelling...

'You Bum!!! Get a job you bum!!! Bum!!! Stop him!!! He threatened me!!!'

Oh. Side note #1:I travel to NYC two to three times/year.We rent through VRBO or Airbnb. If you New Yorkers want to rent out your place for a long weekend sometime, let me know.Side note #2:Cleaning out my Dad's house and he has about a thousand 33 and 78 vinyl records, mostly jazz. Is there a market for old vinyl, or should I donate them to the library?Just askin....

I read the Ephron article in yesterday's NYT and thought "WTF is this woman talking about?". It's like her stream of consciousness leaked out her ear and into an email that sent itself to the Times. I think she might be crazy.

Glad to see you've got you hate in the right place today, Snob. I just about went apoplectic when I saw that pile of shit that Delia Ephron wrote. Nonetheless, I can easily imagine her writing it, but I can't for the life of me figure out why the NYT published it. Was the regularly scheduled bike-hating op-ed columnist locked up in a padded room down at Bellevue?

That lady in the Honda sounds like the same one who was pointing at a red light (that I hadn't gotten to yet) and screaming about asshole cyclists not stopping at lights. This all as she and her no doubt long suffering husband were walking in the middle of Riverside Dr.

The challenge with a large number of them is a dealer will pretend he didn't see that ultra-rare 78 in the stack and act like you don't have much.

IMHO, take a long time to go through the records 3-5 at a time and sort into a couple of boxes by value.

Some of that material probably never made the digital conversion.It would be a major contribution if you could find a local enthusiast to convert the more rare recordings to digital and post-em-up as a torrent. There are vinyl/jazz geeks that will get the big-O if you have rarer material.

Some of the vinyl jackets may be of interest to other geeks. They've changed graphics for a large number of long-selling recordings.

Wow,I guess I could rant about the nebbish author of that idiotic screed, but really, this is about press failure. The press has been functionally dead since Gore lost to SCOTUS/FL Governor and since the Bush wars. Editors no longer think, much less edit. The worst part is that this is a flagship newspaper. About as useful as a Spanish flagship in Manila Bay these days.

Nora notes; "Almost all directors and cinematographers know that, in a movie, the color blue pulls focus. If you place a love scene in front of, say, a blue bench, the audience will look at the bench and not the actors" That said, it shouldn't be to hard to see one of those deadly bikes coming your way...just sayin'

I'm pedaling downhill at almost 30 mph on a 2 lane steep downhill, at the bottom is a dirt road intersection...double yellow line on the hill, - an imbecile in a pickup crosses the double yellow line to PASS me (I'm taking the lane...FYI - 25 mph speed limit), passes me at 50mph probably, pulls back into 'our' lane just as another pickup comes UP the hill, and then another pickup pulls out from the dirt road intersection, AND STOPS! Pickup that passed me goes around it - to the front, just barely; I lay my bike down. at almost full speed, skidding around the rear of the stopped truck; my neighbor in HIS pickup was coming up behind me, saw the whole thing, pulls the intersection stopped guy out of his truck and comes close to pulverizing him / he thought I had just been run over as he only saw me go around the pickup to the back essentially lying down at a 15 degree angle from the ground / in a cloud of dust and screams (mine).

I have no animus towards people in pickups, despite their bumper stickers of left or right.

Delia ephron's article is the most inane thing I've read in a very long time. It is pointless and meanders all over the place. If her point was to show that she is a complete idiot, then I'm mistaken as she did a wonderful job at that.

Rural 14: Nora Ephron would have smashed into the truck and gotten run over and lay there helpless and in excruciating pain from 32 broken bones and then while the pickup truck guys were going for help she would be pierced by a thousand glass needles shot by space aliens, and then she'd be attacked by rats with razor-sharp teeth while she lay there helpless as they slowly feasted on her eyeballs and ate their way into her brain cavity and as the darkness, the dullness slowly came over her she would think, oh my god that op-ed was so ill-advised!

I know, just following someone else's lead of referring to her as Nora (you know, THE MORE SUCCESSFUL SISTER). I'm hoping that even if she doesn't read this, it will still, cosmically, somehow, piss her off.

Yeah, people on bikes are going to be aggressive, dealing with city drivers; if you don't like aggressive, what are you doing in New York?

And that lady in the Honda who doesn't think she needs to use turn signals? She's lucky the biker didn't have a Kryptonite lock with him; city bikers use them as much for self-defense against cars as for vainly hoping they'll slow down getting their bikes stolen.

Don't salmon if you're a bike (or ped, or vehicle). Look before you cross the road. If you can convince the NYT to publish your Op-Ed, you can probably write something that isn't totally inane if you try harder.

Non-locals may not know that there is no right-turn-on-red in NYC, so Honda CRV lady broke the law just to get warmed up.

Tim A@3:15: Salmoning is actually recommended for pedestrians, such as runners, if they have to be in the street.

Also, re Delia: She felt the horrid breeze *on her back*. So the bike salmon passed behind her, after she safely passed in front of him. The two of them should move in together somewhere far, far from me.

I was curious about this intersection she's so upset about so I checked out google maps. She doesn't have to worry about cars turning into bike lane traffic though, because naturally there's a Mercedes parked in it (in front of a hydrant, no less):

She was just struggling with her geriatric incontinence medication, got frustrated, put her diaper on her head, and forgot to use the word begrimed. So she took it out, via a screed to the NYT, on the first thing she saw, a salmon.

Rural 14 @209: "I have no animus towards people in pickups, despite their bumper stickers of left or right." There's a pickup with a left wing bumper sticker? Maybe in Canada, but south of the NSA border????

rural14That sounds pretty terrifying. Glad you're OK. Maybe it's time to update the commuter's motto to "if it's raining assholes take the bus." Probably not an option for you, though. And forecasters still can't tell us when it's going to rain assholes, we just find out when it DOES rain assholes. Hello Delia. Hope you don't own a pickup.

Dear Ms. Babble, Are you hearing double too? Imagine you're on a ride and you pull up to a corner and bat-shit crazy Dorothy R is standing there and she starts screaming at you her bat-shit crazy BS. Then at next corner bat-shirt crazy Delia is standing there and you she starts screaming her bat-shit crazy BS. Then at the next corner Anthony Wiener is standing there and you have to see him covering his cock with a Snob Hat. Then at the next corner you look at your cell-phone and you see Anthony Weiner's cock 2X (having seen your legs at the previous corner you didn't think Carlos was going to let you go without a phone number did you?) . And you have to experience all of this TWICE. As the announcer said when the Hindenburg exploded "Oh the Humanity".

Diamond has since published Collapse (Penguin, 2005: 574 pp) which includes a chapter, ‘Mining’ Australia (38 pp) deserving the most serious consideration by any Australian government, regardless of its party political social theories.

In his tour de force, he reviews the reasons for the disintegration of cultures with legacies of abandoned ruins in Norse Greenland, Anasazi Chaco Canyon, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and other Pacific Islands, in Mayan Yucatan, and elsewhere. These reasons – mainly overpopulation and irrational actions driving local environmental degradation – have also played their part in modern tragedies including the Rwandan genocide and the impoverishment of nations such as Haiti, while neighbour states (eg. Dominican Republic) prosper. The prospects for nations including China, the United States, and others subject to environmentally disastrous values, with failure to recognize or anticipate the consequences of irrational political policies and unsuccessful remedies, are comprehensively brought into focus. He sees Australia, not as a nation facing imminent collapse, but as the first world’s miners’ canary: a developed country facing a rapid decline in living standards as its burgeoning population outstrips its rapidly degrading natural resource base. After consulting widely with government authorities, academics (including Tim Flannery) and grassroots farmers, graziers, and Landcare-type groups, Jared Diamond compares us with other nations, past and present. He details our problems of soil fertility and salinization, land degradation, diminishing freshwater resources, distance costs, over-exploitation of forests and fisheries, importation of inappropriate European agricultural values and methods and alien species, trade and immigration policies. He concludes that the mining of our natural resources – their unsustainable exploitation at rates faster than their renewal rates since European settlement began – gives us the dubious distinction of ‘…illustrating in extreme form the exponentially accelerating “horse race” in which the world now finds itself……on the one hand, the development of environmental problems……on the other hand, the development of public environmental concern, and of private and governmental countermeasures. Which horse will win? Many readers……will live long enough to see the outcome.’

Yes, south of the NSA border, many pickups have lefty bumper stickers. Try Burlington -> Brattleboro VT / Northampton MA, Portsmouth NH, etc. Lots of bros in trucks with good intentions. But the only good sanctimony is my sanctimony of course. Don't the right wingers likewise tell you their suggestions are only for your own good? But while I'm at it, Fuck the Koch Bros! Here in the People's Republic of VT we're appalled.

And thanks for your well wishes, well wishers. Yes, it was a scary moment....I'm still shaky even.

And no need for newskin/moleskin...I was wearing a heavy wool jacket - boiled wool from the Ibex Tent, and while it shredded some, I'm fine. There's one benefit to 30 degree weather!

And it's always raining assholes...hey dude, get offa the phone! etc. Not even an "I'm sorry", as my neighbor stuffed the guy back into his F150.

Rural 14: Come to think of it I was driving in Vermont once and saw a Ben & Jerry's sticker on a pickup. Over here, across the border in rural NYS, not so much. Usually they say "I'm in the NRA and I vote" or "Romney & Ryan 2012" (whoever the hell they were) P.S. Glad to hear you're OK.

Angie, you do not "need to know". The corporagovilitarindustrosecuraglomoplex and their media propaganda outlets do not want you to know. Watch your back with your healment mirror next time your are out riding, keeping a particular lookout for jackboot clad peds.

Ephron wrote "On the concrete island are 15 filthy distracting newspaper dispensers in red, blue, white and orange." She seems to have a dislike of not just the Mets and the Knicks and the MTA and the NYPD but Old Glory too.

Another despicable boomer terrified of cohort replacement. Regardless of where she was born, clearly she has not spent much of her life in NYC and she has clearly earned the badge of Honorary B&T Dipshit. Hear that, missey? You are Bridge & Tunnel swine and I invite you to leave and not let the doorknob hit you in the ass. Or maybe we can just count on a delivery guy taking her ass out for us. :-D

I think that when Delia Ephron finally gets creamed at an intsection while doing her New Yorker thing (ie: not paying attention to lights OR where the hell she's going), we nominate her for a Darwin Award.

Well, "Bike Snob", until you decided that the best way to kick Ms. Ephron was to attack her ethnicity, I was enjoying your piece. Perhaps, as much as Ms. Ephron has a problem with bikes and the color blue, you have a problem with Jews? Sure seems like it. New York City will be a better place when the nasty attitudes from all sides take a hike.

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About Me

While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment. No offense meant to the critiqued. Always keep riding!